First Kiss (28 page)

Luckily, Breckin had all the episodes of 22 Jump Street on tape and forced me to watch them. The healing benefits of Johnny Depp kicked in, and suddenly, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. God, what would I have done without Breckin? I was so close to taking a dark turn back then. It was practically Girl, Interrupted . You know, the movie with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in the mental ward.

Friends are important. You must have them. Example: Ted Kaczynski. Things would've been so different if he'd had a few friends. First, those endless manifestos! Likely, a first reader (you just know a friend would've been asked to take a look) might've said, "Ted, this doesn't make any sense. Writing's not your bag. Pick up the guitar, dude!" Think about it. With a mend or two, he could ve been a John Mayer instead of the Unabomber.

Making and keeping friends is not easy, though. Especially for girls. The whole Sex and the City vibe is practically a fantasy. Do you have a Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha in your life? Most girls don't. First of all, there's the whole issue of time. I mean, with work and everything, there just aren't endless hours available to sit at a coffee shop and deconstruct every millisecond of life like they do on that show!

My advice is to be open. Sometimes the girl at the office who annoys you could be your best friend in disguise. That's how it happened with me and Suzi-Suzi. I'd just moved to New York and gotten a job as a waitress in a very chic restaurant. Suzi-Suzi worked there, too. Anyway, she found out that I had one of those little calorie counter books at home, so she used to call my apartment after our shift to tell me everything that she'd eaten that day. So here I am sitting there and adding up her calories. Every night . Ugh! But now we know each other so well. When Jude Law proposed to Sienna Miller, she called right away to find out how I was holding up. Now that's a true friend.

I think an intimate little circle of friends is essential to navigating through life. My advice: Buy a generous plan for your cell phone and keep in touch about everything . You never know when someone will have a kernel of wisdom that could stop you from setting a destructive event into motion. What I'm about to tell you is a true story, and it's a frightening, cautionary tale that illustrates this point.

So, I've been in a million weddings and have a closet bursting with hideous bridesmaid dresses that I'll never wear again. Well, one day I just up and decided to give them away to women at a transitional shelter. I figure, it's a perfectly good dress, and these women are trying to get their lives back together.

Enter Danni, another best friend of mine. She'd seen the ghastly frocks and thoughtin addition to being awfulthat they were just too dressy. Well, everybody knows that overdressing for a job interview is almost as bad as Mrtderdressing for one. I mean, it's a very fine line.

So I didn't donate the dresses. At the end of the day, it would've been a disservice to those women trying to reclaim their lives. Thank God for Danni! She stopped me just in the nick of time. I ended up taking in shoes instead. And what happened? Greta totally worked her secondhand Manolos in that temp service interview. Now she's an executive secretary for the CEO of a major corporation. All because of Danni!

It's like that Bette Midler song" 'Cause you got to have friends/Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da/ Friends"

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Dramatic Reading

Julia!

I've got the most brilliant idea for your wedding. Yes! Another one. First step: Ditch the singer. Why? Because it's so yesterday. Do we really need to hear some second-rate vocalist croon "The Reason" by Hoobastank? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The voice inside your head should be screaming, "No!" So my wedding gift to you and Roman will be a dramatic monologue at the ceremony. This was my talent showcase for the Miss America Pageant, so you know I'll be well rehearsed. All pageant girls have a steely self-discipline for such things. Anyway, I'm thinking about doing something from Jerry Maguire. You know, the Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger movie with the famous "You had me at hello" line. Trust me. There will be a river of tears!

Air Kisses, Kiki

About the Author

Kylie Adams is the author of Ex-Girlfriends, Fly Me to the Moon, Baby, Baby , and the USA Today best sellers The Only Thing Better than Chocolate (with Janet Daily and Sandra Steffen) and Santa Baby (with Lisa Jackson, Elaine Coffman, and Lisa Plumley).

Two new projects will be published later this fall Ex-Boyfriends and The Night Before Christmas (a holiday anthology featuring the novella A Good Girl's Guide to a Very Bad Christmas) . Also set for release is the mass-market paperback edition of Ex-Girlfriends .

Kylie lives with her shih tzu and bichon frise in Brandon, Mississippi, where she is currently at work on her next novel and involved in a twelve-step program for Us Weekly addicts.

To contact Kylie, visit her online at www.readky-lie.com. Or write: Kylie Adams, c/o New American Library, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

If you fell in love with Sydney in First Date and laughed out loud at Kiki's misadventures in First Kiss , there's one more bridesmaid you'll have to meet before the big wedding in

First Dance

BOOK THREE IN The Bridesmaid Chronicles

Vivien Shelton is Manhattan's top female divorce attorney and Julia Spinelli's best friend and future bridesmaid. Except Vivien has seen the ugly side of loveand alights at the wedding in Texas with the perfect present: an ironclad prenup. But the groom's good ole boy lawyer is itching for a fightespecially with Vivien, a woman he has tangled with in the past

Read ahead for a sneak peek of Vivien's story.

Vivien Shelton kissed the five doggie noses arrayed at varying heights in front of her and backed out of her Manhattan apartment. She clutched a tape roller and her computer bag in one hand, and a tall espresso-strength coffee in the other. Ellis whined mournfully, and Brooklyn gave a sharp, disapprov ing bark.

She looked regretfully at her gaggle of greyhounds. "I know, guys. But I can't stay and play. Klein, Schmidt and Belker pays me for my legal expertise, not my Frisbee skills. Tabitha will keep you company, okay?" She glanced at the tiny blond walker, still incredulous that the dogs didn't pull her right off her feet.

"Queenie has a two p.m. vet appointment, remember. Just have them send me the billforty-three greyhounds later, they know I'm good for it."

"Will do." Tabitha crunched down on a Granny Smith apple and waved goodbye. "What about the couple who's interested in Brooklyn? What should I tell them?"

"I'm not comfortable with him going to them. There's something 'off about those people. Tell them he's already been placed."

"Okay. Have a good one, Viv."

"You too!" She dropped another quick kiss on little Mannie's speckled pink nosehe was practically an albinoand he licked her cheek, probably taking off half of her makeup. Mannie was the latest in her long line of rescued greyhounds, and he hadn't left her side all day on Sunday. She felt guilty leaving him, but he was in good hands. Cranky old Schmidt would have a stroke if she brought Mannie anywhere near the office.

Viv glanced at her watch and galloped toward the elevator, madly tape-rolling the little white hairs off of her left trouser-clad thigh. She did her lower left leg while waiting for the car to arrive, and her right leg on the way down from the seventeenth floor to the first. A slurp of coffee, then the right front of her jacket. Another slurp, and the left front.

Mr. Duarte from the eleventh floor watched eagerly as the roller skimmed over her breasts, and she sent him a quelling look. This only made him look hopeful that she might punish him. Duarte gave her the creeps.

Once they got to the ground floor, Viv waited for him to scram. Then she sidled over to Timmy, the doorman, raised a come-hither brow, and dove down the service hallway. Timmy appeared within seconds, she presented her backside, and he tape-rollered her from nape to ankles.

"Oooooh, Timmy. Was that good for you, darling?" She winked at him once he was done. "Because, as always, it was sensational for me."

"You're lucky I'm here to service you, Miss Viv." Timmy winked back.

"That I am," Viv agreed. "That I am. Thank you!" She popped the tape roller into her bulging computer bag and rushed out the door just as the firm's car and driver appeared.

Viv had once thought that the chauffered car was a nice perk of working at Klein, Schmidt and Belker: a luxury. She now considered Maurice and the Lincoln Continental to be her jailer and paddy wagon, respectively. Maurice made sure she was working hard to generate the big bucks for Schmidt and Belker by seven forty-five a.m. each weekday morning, and by nine forty-five a.m. on too-regular Saturdays. (Klein was technically out of the picture, after he'd dropped dead at a urinal in the men's room three years ago. He'd left behind a spectacular courtroom win ratio and an exposed trouser-snake that bent even farther right than his politics.)

"Good morning, Maurice," Viv said crisply as she stepped into the Lincoln. "And how are you today?" The usual nauseating smell of wintergreen gum and tropical fruit carpet freshener assailed her nostrils.

The wizened little man looked at his watch and frowned. "Better, now that you're in. Four times around the block today, Miss Shelton!"

"Four, really? How frustrating. Were you early?" Viv was never late. Not by as much as thirty seconds. And tardiness in others was one of her biggest pet peeves.

"Early, schmurly," grumbled Maurice, lurching forward and left in the heavy traffic and cutting off an irate and vocal cabdriver. Then he floored it for all of eight feet before dodging right again, barely missing a bike messenger, and slamming on the brakes.

Viv took it all in stride. She had a strong suspicion that Schmidt and Belker awarded Maurice an annual bonus for delivering her hundred-and-thirty pounds of flesh before eight o'clock each day. She and the other five attorneys on his run were his responsibility.

She had at least fifteen minutes to kill before the car got from her Upper East Side building to the law offices in midtown, so she checked e-mail on her Palm Pilot.

Please, she prayed, let there not be any more wedding horrors awaiting her. Since the troubling news that her best friend, Julia Spinelli, was getting mar-ried to some redneck she'd only known a month, Viv had tried to digest the fact that she'd have to be a She shuddered, unable to wrap her mind around the concept.

A bridesmaid . Vivien didn't want to be anybody's maid, not even for a day. The whole concept was foreign; it implied servitude and worse, it spanned all the possibilities of polyester.

She'd already had to leave a deposition one day to find a full-length, strapless foundation garment in her bra size. Julia had then commanded that she purchase a pair of satin Manolo evening mules and a flaring petticoat . Viv had never in her life worn something as fussy as a petticoat, and she dreaded seeing the hideous taffeta creation that went over it. Oh, God! Please let her not have to wear anything with a bow on the butt

Under any other circumstances, she'd laugh her ass off at the idea of one of Manhattan's top divorce attorneys moonlighting as a bridesmaid in a wedding. But all the humor went out of it immediately when she was the top divorce attorney in question. Viv had represented some high-profile clients, and she only hoped the papers didn't get hold of this. She could see the headlines now: raptor in rosebuds! WILL SHELTON SERVE GROOM PAPERS AT RECEPTION?

Viv shook off what she knew were selfish thoughts under the circumstances. She should be a lot more concerned about Julia than she was about herself. She'd already questioned her delicately on the phone about this guy Roman. She'd also told Julia that coin-cidentaUy she knew his sister, Kiki Douglas. Unfortunately Viv had represented her ex-husband in their Manhattan divorce three years ago.

"Listen, hon," she'd said to Julia. "If Roman is anything like Kiki, you want to be careful."

"Roman is nothing like Kiki!" Julia had exclaimed, even though to Viv's knowledge she'd never met her.

Viv had closed her eyes to ward off a migraine impossibleand sent an urgent e-mail to Sydney Spi-nelli, Julia's older sister.

Today there was a reply, and Vivien scanned it quickly.

Subject: Re: Your little sister has gone crazy!

Date: XXXXXX

From: numbersgeek

To: vshelton

Tell me about it! Yes, I've met him, and there's something fishy with the guy. What kind of Texan speaks Italian, wears designer clothes, and has a vineyard??? And Viv, here's the really awful part: the ring he gave her is FAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think he's marrying her for the $$$. But I can't talk sense into her.

Syd

" Fake ?!" Viv said it aloud, with enough force that Maurice squinted at her in the rearview mirror. " What ? She has got to be kidding!"

Viv typed a quick reply. She'd call Sydney as soon as she got to the office.

Subject: FAKE ring???

Date: XXXXXX

From: vshelton@kleinschmidtbelker

To: numbersgeek

What do you mean, the ring he gave her is fake?! HOW COULD HE??? I'm speechless, xoxoxo, Viv

*This electronic message transmission contains information from the law firm of Klein, Schmidt and Belker that may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended solely for the recipient and use by any other party is not authorized. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any copying, disclosure, distribution or use of the contents of this transmission is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us immediately. Thank you.

Sydney was obviously online at the same time, because before Viv had finished reading one of the work e-mails her reply popped into the mailbox.

Subject: Re: FAKE ring???